All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated. It does not pertain at the whim of whatever personage or committee of public safety that orders it, that makes a gift of it. Dictatorship can cut off the heads of men, but it cannot make them increase and multiply; it can transform intelligences into corpses, but it cannot transform cadavers into intelligences; it can make the slaves creep and crawl under its boots, like maggots or caterpillars, flattening them under his heavy tread, — but only Liberty can give them wings. It is only through free labor, intellectual and moral labor, that our generation, civilization or chrysalis, will be metamorphosed into a bright and shiny butterfly, will take on the human type and continue its development in Harmony.
…
The social revolution can be made only by the organ of all individually; otherwise it is not the social revolution. What is necessary then, that towards which it must tend, is to give each and everyone the possibility, that is to say in the necessity of acting, in order that the movements, communicating with each other, give and receive the impetus of progress and thus increase the force tenfold and a hundredfold.
Down with the Bosses!
…
Natural government and natural exchange,—natural government, which is the government of individuals by individuals, of themselves by themselves, universal individualism, the human self [moi-humain] moving freely in the humanitary whole [tout-humanité]; and natural exchange, which is individuals exchanging of themselves with themselves, being at once producers and consumers, co-workers and co-inheritors of social capital, human liberty, infinitely divisible liberty, in the community of goods, in indivisible property. On that day, I say, of natural government and natural exchange, an organism driven by attraction and solidarity will rise up, majestic and beneficent, in the heart of regenerated humanity. And authoritarian and propertarian government, authoritarian and propertarian exchange, machineries overburdened with intermediaries and representative signs, will collapse, solitary and abandoned, in the dried-up course of the flood of ancient arbitrariness.
On Exchange
…
Any physical or moral sensation is the result of a contact — a shock or kiss that places what is most pure in the lower into relation with what is most impure in the higher — circulation thus propagating from organism to organism and from sphere to sphere, from attraction to attraction, via the four gradations, variously and universally manifested.
The Theory of Infinitesimal Humanities
…
Man is an essentially revolutionary being. He cannot immobilize himself in one place. He does not live the life of boundaries, but the life of the stars.
The Humanisphere
If “classical” anarchism was bound by its rejection of State authority, Joseph Déjacque’s criticism extends to that authority’s multiple manifestations throughout society and society’s enclosure within the State. Well before Gustav Landauer, Déjacque already understood that we were the State; but also, that we could be so much more.
Be then frankly an entire anarchist and not a quarter anarchist, an eighth anarchist, or one-sixteenth anarchist, as one is a one-fourth, one-eighth or one-sixteenth partner in trade. Go beyond the abolition of contract to the abolition not only of the sword and of capital, but also of property and of authority in all its forms. Then you will have arrived at the anarchist community; that is to say, the social state where each one is free to produce or consume according to his will or his fancy without controlling, or being controlled by any other person whatever; where the balance of production and consumption is established naturally, no longer by the restrictive laws and arbitrary force of others, but by the free exercise of industry prompted by the needs and desires of each individual. The sea of humanity needs no dikes. Give its tides full sweep and each day they will find their level.
On the Human Being, Male and Female
We share Joseph Déjaque’s essay “Down with the Bosses!”, continuing our overly brief review of anarchist criticisms of the State.
Continue reading →
Joseph Déjacque: the State against boundless individuality
All that which is not liberty is against liberty. Liberty is not a thing that can be allocated. It does not pertain at the whim of whatever personage or committee of public safety that orders it, that makes a gift of it. Dictatorship can cut off the heads of men, but it cannot make them increase and multiply; it can transform intelligences into corpses, but it cannot transform cadavers into intelligences; it can make the slaves creep and crawl under its boots, like maggots or caterpillars, flattening them under his heavy tread, — but only Liberty can give them wings. It is only through free labor, intellectual and moral labor, that our generation, civilization or chrysalis, will be metamorphosed into a bright and shiny butterfly, will take on the human type and continue its development in Harmony.
…
The social revolution can be made only by the organ of all individually; otherwise it is not the social revolution. What is necessary then, that towards which it must tend, is to give each and everyone the possibility, that is to say in the necessity of acting, in order that the movements, communicating with each other, give and receive the impetus of progress and thus increase the force tenfold and a hundredfold.
Down with the Bosses!
…
Natural government and natural exchange,—natural government, which is the government of individuals by individuals, of themselves by themselves, universal individualism, the human self [moi-humain] moving freely in the humanitary whole [tout-humanité]; and natural exchange, which is individuals exchanging of themselves with themselves, being at once producers and consumers, co-workers and co-inheritors of social capital, human liberty, infinitely divisible liberty, in the community of goods, in indivisible property. On that day, I say, of natural government and natural exchange, an organism driven by attraction and solidarity will rise up, majestic and beneficent, in the heart of regenerated humanity. And authoritarian and propertarian government, authoritarian and propertarian exchange, machineries overburdened with intermediaries and representative signs, will collapse, solitary and abandoned, in the dried-up course of the flood of ancient arbitrariness.
On Exchange
…
Any physical or moral sensation is the result of a contact — a shock or kiss that places what is most pure in the lower into relation with what is most impure in the higher — circulation thus propagating from organism to organism and from sphere to sphere, from attraction to attraction, via the four gradations, variously and universally manifested.
The Theory of Infinitesimal Humanities
…
Man is an essentially revolutionary being. He cannot immobilize himself in one place. He does not live the life of boundaries, but the life of the stars.
The Humanisphere
If “classical” anarchism was bound by its rejection of State authority, Joseph Déjacque’s criticism extends to that authority’s multiple manifestations throughout society and society’s enclosure within the State. Well before Gustav Landauer, Déjacque already understood that we were the State; but also, that we could be so much more.
Be then frankly an entire anarchist and not a quarter anarchist, an eighth anarchist, or one-sixteenth anarchist, as one is a one-fourth, one-eighth or one-sixteenth partner in trade. Go beyond the abolition of contract to the abolition not only of the sword and of capital, but also of property and of authority in all its forms. Then you will have arrived at the anarchist community; that is to say, the social state where each one is free to produce or consume according to his will or his fancy without controlling, or being controlled by any other person whatever; where the balance of production and consumption is established naturally, no longer by the restrictive laws and arbitrary force of others, but by the free exercise of industry prompted by the needs and desires of each individual. The sea of humanity needs no dikes. Give its tides full sweep and each day they will find their level.
On the Human Being, Male and Female
We share Joseph Déjaque’s essay “Down with the Bosses!”, continuing our overly brief review of anarchist criticisms of the State.
Continue reading →